Epson Perfection 2580 photo color scanner

CNET editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Design : 7.0
  Features : 8.0
  Performance : 7.0
  Service and support : 8.0
  Overall score: 7.4 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Jeff Dorgay
• Edited by:
  Rebecca Viksnins
• Reviewed on: 10/13/2004

Whether you're a beginning user or a professional photographer who needs a second scanner at home for editing your party pictures, the Epson Perfection 2580 Photo will serve you well. It features a decent set of software tools, and the film autoloader is especially convenient for working with 35mm negatives. And at just $149 (list), this Epson leaves you with enough money to buy a printer or a sizable memory card.

The Perfection 2580's space-capsule-like silver-and-gray pebble finish is stylish, and its 10.8-by-16.5-inch footprint won't hog too much desk space. Epson built an autoloader into the lid for convenient 35mm film scanning. The package also includes a standard adapter for handling mounted slides and a USB cable for connecting the unit to either a Mac or a PC. Before you start, you'll need to install the driver and the EpsonScan utility, which provides an easy way of setting up scans based on your skill level.

If you're a digital-imaging newbie, you'll probably be happy using Full Auto mode, which requires no more effort than selecting Auto and clicking the Scan button. If you want to make some basic image adjustments, try the Home mode, which gives you options for fiddling with brightness, color, and resolution. The Professional mode gives you full control over the image size, the resolution, the color, and the exposure. You can also adjust sharpening, descreening (used for taking the half-tone dots out of magazine or newspaper pictures), and dust removal.

With an optical density of 3.2 and an optical resolution of 2,400dpi, the Perfection 2580 offers performance that would set you back a few hundred a couple years ago. Print scans came out fairly well, with even flesh tones and a relatively high level of image sharpness. While it's no match for a dedicated film scanner, the Perfection 2580 turned out decent 35mm scans--good enough for uploading to the Web or e-mailing to friends. And Epson gets bonus points for the convenient autoloader. You can also use the supplied adapter to scan mounted 35mm slides.

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Recent user reviews

• Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 14 reviews
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• Showing 3 of 14 user reviews

• 4.0 stars

  "Very good Scanner and software"

  by will_5050 on March 3, 2007

• 3.5 stars

  "Great price for a good scanner"

  by rwvoss on June 1, 2006

• 1.5 stars

  "XP started to hang"

  by hoctav on August 4, 2005

• See all 14 user reviews Write review

Reviews from around the WebPowered by alaTest

• alaTest.com

  Editors' rating: 82

  Summary: alaTest has collected and analyzed 95 reviews of Epson Perfection 2580 Photo from international magazines and websites. Experts rate this product 78/100 and users 60/100. Comparing these reviews to 33511 other Scanners reviews gives this product an overall alaScore™ 82/100 = Very Good.

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• newbie.org

  Editors' rating: 100

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• pcmag.com

  Editors' rating: 60

  Summary: The Epson Perfection 2580 Photo scanner is a fine entry, with a couple of flaws. In particular, the automatic scan for strips of film performed poorly with black-and-white negatives. Both photo and slide scan quality, however, are better than average ...

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• goodgearguide.com.au

  Editors' rating: 80

  Summary: People who want to digitise batches of 35mm negatives will find the Perfection 2580 most useful.

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